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Dressbarn Wins Award for Customer Engagement Success Using SLI

Posted by Tim CallaneCommerce, Merchandising, Site Search, Success Stories

rtp cust engageThis year, industry-leading retail magazine Retail TouchPoints recognized 18 innovative retailers with a 2015 Customer Engagement Award. According to Retail TouchPoints, each winner has gone the extra mile to delight, surprise and satisfy shoppers. SLI is honored to be recognized with Dressbarn, the Silver Winner in the E-Commerce Innovation category.

“Customer engagement has become a key focus for retailers striving for success in today’s omnichannel world,” said Retail TouchPoints Editor-in-Chief Debbie Hauss. “The award winners are ahead of the curve and are achieving business success in this increasingly competitive marketplace.”

Among the winners this year, Dressbarn joins retail giants AT&T, Barneys New York, Kate Spade, Kohl’s, Payless ShoeSource and Pep Boys.

Dressbarn Uses SLI Learning Search to Create Great Omnichannel Customer Experiences

A major priority for Dressbarn is to always provide a great customer experience, regardless of the channel. One way the retailer continues its mission is to use SLI Learning Search® (and search data) to offer its customers a unified, seamless experience, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for across all channels.

Online

Dressbarn pays close attention to online trends, monitoring site search activity and on-page analytics, to optimize landing pages, PPC ads, email campaigns, site search and more. For instance, this past summer, Dressbarn saw a spike in search volume and conversion on the keyword Camryn dress. Dressbarn used its top-performing keywords report to identify the Camryn dress as a product to feature across channels to take advantage of its recent popularity.

Dressbarn quickly created a landing page using SLI Landing Page Creator™ just for the Camryn dress and then promoted it via the home page, email campaign and PPC ads. With search data in hand, Dressbarn also was able to fine-tune the page’s meta tags for better SEO. Conversion rates and sales soon skyrocketed.

Mobile

Dressbarn also provides its customers with a mobile-friendly experience. To adapt to the physical limitations of the mobile user experience, the retailer implemented SLI Mobile’s prominent search bar (vs. tiny magnifying glass) and easy-to-select refinements on search and navigation pages (e.g. color, size), speeding the shoppers’ path to purchase. The retailer also resizes all images into thumbnails, increasing the page load speed and customer engagement.

On its mobile site, Dressbarn has seen noteworthy results engaging customers and increasing conversion with SLI Rich Auto Complete™. Rich Auto Complete™ delivers a search experience with fast, visual and dynamic results. Shoppers are able to type less and buy more. With Rich Auto Complete, the time it took a shopper to find a product and complete a purchase decreased significantly, and mobile site search usage increased by 25 percent.

In-Store

At Dressbarn brick-and-mortar stores, the retailer offers associates and shoppers an endless inventory of products and information via iPads on display. If a product isn’t on the rack at the time, customers are able to use site search to look up the product, review the product description and get a clear idea of how it would look. This was a unique opportunity to use Dressbarn’s digital properties to make its stores more effective and its customers more informed and engaged.

For Dressbarn, it’s not all about making the sale right at that instant, but about building a seamless and delightful omnichannel experience that creates loyal customers who love Dressbarn and want to have a life-long relationship with the retailer.

Congratulations again to Dressbarn for a well-deserved win.

To learn more about Dressbarn’s winning merchandising strategies, view recent SLI webinar with Dressbarn E-Commerce Marketing Manager Sri PV: Merchandising Matters.

Holiday E-commerce & Personalization Among Top Themes at SLI Connect

Posted by Shaun RyanConferences, eCommerce

Shaun SLI Connect

I’ve written before about the many benefits of face-to-face meetings, and after our inaugural SLI Connect event in Seattle earlier this month, I can affirm the immense value of gathering our customers together in one place.

SLI Connect provided a full day of retailer presentations and discussions about best practices for site search, navigation, product recommendations, mobile, merchandising, SEO and more. As retailers shared their current challenges in breakout groups, many were able to help each other identify “quick win” solutions. And as SLI executives shared our tentative product roadmap, we received real-time feedback about which innovations are most important to our customers.

We all enjoyed discussing the shopping experience of the future. Plus, we had fun dining, networking and laughing together at evening events. The relationships we built or enhanced were worth the effort of gathering from various parts of the world. Many SLI customers contacted us afterward to share their enthusiasm, indicating that their time was well spent.

There were many clear takeaways, but a few themes stood out most for me:

Holiday 2014

We requested that attendees complete a survey, which asked: “Which capabilities are expected to be the biggest drivers of your e-commerce business this holiday season?” Given nine options, retailers identified the top three drivers as SEO, Optimized Site Search and Optimized Mobile Sites. The answers indicate that getting shoppers to arrive on your site is just as important as ensuring they find the products they seek once they’re on the site.

We also surveyed SLI Connect attendees about their business drivers and new initiatives for the 2014 holiday season. When we asked: “Is Omnichannel an important part of your 2014 holiday season strategy?” 85% responded “Yes,” indicating a clear priority for multi-channel retailers to optimize interactions across mobile, social, desktop and/or brick-and-mortar store channels.

Personalization

I believe e-commerce is just at the cusp of what can happen with personalization, and I am not alone. Others at SLI Connect shared an interest in enabling their customers to find (or be pushed) relevant product information or content at the right time, via the right channel. In a panel discussion, Alicia Fiorletta, a senior editor at Retail TouchPoints, explained: “All retailers just want to get closer to the customer – to get to where the customer is and interact with them in a way that relates to them.”

During her presentation about using SLI to help customers find products amid tens of thousands of SKUs, Lisa Dahlke, web operations manager at Silver Star Brands (a multi-channel retailer that includes Miles Kimball, Walter Drake, Exposures and others) said: “We are trying to understand who our customers are, how we need to treat them differently, and how our smaller brands can most stand out.”

Sam Sarullo of Lakeshore Learning shared: “We’re seeing a high trend in text/SMS messages converting, so we’re changing our strategy to do more text blasts.” His comment underscored how the strategies for reaching and converting shoppers in a relevant way across channels are ever-evolving.

Partners in Innovation

During SLI Connect, SLI CTO Wayne Munro and I offered a sneak peek into SLI’s product roadmap, with an interactive session that gave customers and prospects the opportunity to share their priorities for 2015. In addition to hearing what’s on deck, customers learned more about the products and features already available for accelerating e-commerce.

Following the event, Gavin Trippe of 2 Wheel Parts Supply said, “I attended SLI Connect knowing SLI was going to play a big part of our success in e-commerce, and I was extremely impressed with the event and the SLI team’s knowledge. It was clear that SLI really understands the future of e-commerce. The company continues to improve and invest in the product, offering a huge amount of features.”

He added: “One of the most important things SLI offers is the willingness to develop our integration past the initial installation − it shows they agree that a site will never be finished and will always have room for improvement.”

I appreciate Gavin’s comment, because I take pride in our business model; we provide ongoing innovations and advice that will continually improve our clients’ sites – not as a separate professional services or support fee, but as an included service. And I think it’s this way of doing business that makes it valuable and enjoyable for our customers to spend time with us. They know that we are genuinely listening to and responding to their requests for improvement, rather than pushing sales pitches.

I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with those who attended SLI Connect, and I look forward to hosting the event again in the future.

If you missed the event and would like some tips on improving your holiday results, please enjoy this on-demand version of our latest webinar, the E-Commerce Holiday Playbook.